


Hagsgate, Ten Years Later

by batyatoon



Category: Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle
Genre: Gen, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-11
Updated: 2012-03-11
Packaged: 2017-11-01 19:41:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batyatoon/pseuds/batyatoon





	Hagsgate, Ten Years Later

_"If I were you," he said, "I would have children."_

Unto this town there came a shabby stranger  
(This town where hearts were hard and souls were blind)  
With him there came a thin and thorny witch  
And one white mare that shone like any silver.  
They came here through bare gullies and waste water,  
And were surprised to find a paradise.

Yes, in those days this was a paradise,  
And little of this tale will sound much stranger;  
In those lost days we poured out wine like water,  
And yet with sorrow all our eyes were blind.  
Though fat with grain and laden down with silver,  
We feared the fate foretold us by a witch.

Two decades since, our king had hired this witch --  
Nay, not to make this land a paradise;  
To build his castle, for a price in silver,  
A castle that would warn off any stranger.  
And at her word it spiraled sheer and blind  
Up from the cliffs that hang above the water.

Our king's vow proved as fickle as the water,  
And he refused to pay the foreign witch  
One-tenth the promised price, so raging blind  
She cursed him with the fall of paradise;  
And cursed us too, who would not help a stranger,  
And darkened all our joys like tarnished silver.

Since then we had no pleasure of our silver,  
Our crops, our herds, our perfect sun and water;  
For doom, we knew, would come not from a stranger  
But from among our own -- so said the witch.  
A child of ours would drown our paradise;  
A curse as cruel as our king, and as blind.

So on we went, as barren and as blind  
As all the sea aswim with aching silver,  
Until the day our poisoned paradise  
Was beaten down by hooves that shone like water.  
We lost the bitter wisdom of the witch  
To our new king, a child of ours, a stranger.

No longer blind to tree and earth and water,  
Drop silver in remembrance of the witch;  
For paradise is sweeter than we knew, and stranger.


End file.
